Darkness Stirring: A Troubled Spirits Novel

by J. R. Erickson

  "There are stories, yes. Books less so. You must remember that Michigan and all of the United States is young. The old stories come from Native Americans. They passed their stories through spoken word and reenactments, but even so, they too shared stories of witches or hags. Now in other countries we see a much larger emphasis on the witch as both archetype and figure in history.

  “In Russia, Baba Yaga is the dark witch most known in Slavic folklore. We first see her appear in writings in the late 1700s. Baba Yaga is a hag who dwells in a hut on chicken legs. She possesses magical powers and is said to bestow wishes upon those who do her favors. In the study of Jungian psychology, we examine Baba Yaga as part of the crone or even the wild aspect of the female psyche. But in the old stories, Baba Yaga was a cannibal witch whose victims were primarily children.

  “We similarly see a story appear in the Grimm Fairytales, which were first published by German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm under the name Kinder- und Hausmärchen, which translates to Children's and Household Tales. The story of Hansel and Gretel appeared in their book, and that story originated with one of the brothers' wives, Henriette Dorothea Wild. These were not merely brothers who told tall tales. They were medievalists who were intensely interested in mythology and they collected German folklore.

  “It is said that the story of Hansel and Gretel arose in part due to the great famine that struck the Baltic region from 1314 to 1322. This famine struck more than thirty million people and is estimated to have ended the lives of a quarter of the population in the region. Many families abandoned their small children, and it is said that some were cannibalized. Others still pointed to hags who waited in the forest for these abandoned children, drew them into their homes, and ate them.”

  Lori’s hands had grown clammy and she rubbed them together beneath the table.

  “Then there is Jenny Greenteeth,” Irene continued, “also known as Ginny or Wicked Jenny. The origin of this witch appears in England in the 1800s. Small children were told to stay away from the water or Jenny, a terrifying water witch with green skin and teeth and hair, would grab them and drown them merely for her own pleasure."

  "Those are all very disturbing,” Lori murmured. “And so many of them focus on children.”

  “Yes, they are the stuff of nightmares. If we look at them as real beings the focus on children is twofold. One, children are easier to capture and manipulate. Two, children often possess the traits these beings might desire—eternal youth, etc. If we consider them merely as urban legends, it’s plain to see why their victims are children. The tales are meant to make children behave. ‘Eat your dinner or the Baba Yaga will come for you.’ ‘Don’t play by the pond or Jenny Greenteeth will drag you in.’ That kind of thing.”

  “Is it possible that they were real? These witches?"

  "Some aspect of them was likely real, but stories take on a life of their own. Do the witches exist first or do they arise from the mythology, being born into being from the terror in the hearts of the children imagining them? It's an intriguing line of thought. Sometimes I sit at this desk for hours not writing a word but thinking deeper and deeper into those strange possibilities."

  "My friend disappeared in the Manistee National Forest in 1998,” Lori said. “A friend and I have discovered four other girls who vanished in the area. All of them were between thirteen and fifteen years old, pretty, and wore something that made a sound—usually bells, but one had a whistle. They've gone missing every five years since 1993. After my friend vanished, I started having nightmares about a shrouded being in the woods. I’ve come to think of her as a witch.” Lori reached into her bag and took out the folder she’d tucked her drawings into. She laid them on the table.

  Irene considered them, flipping through each thoughtfully. "Every five years, you say? Manistee National Forest… Hmm… One moment." She stood and disappeared into the stacks.

  Irene did not return with a book, but a massive three-ring binder so overflowing with papers it could not be closed. She dropped it on the table with a thud and settled back into her chair, deftly flipping the pages, though Lori could see no headline or tabs to distinguish the sections.

  “The Manistee National Forest, here we go."

  "What is that?" Lori asked. "The binder?"

  "This is my western Michigan binder. I have a separate binder for southern Michigan, eastern, and an additional one for the Upper Peninsula. This is the place where I store anecdotes. My work is in literature, scholarly articles, printed texts, but I also collect personal stories. All mythology must begin somewhere, after all. I have a story you should read."

  Pushing hard on the metal tabs, Irene opened the binder. She extracted a sheet of paper protected by a clear plastic sleeve and slid it across the table to Lori.

  May, 17, 1963

  Many years ago, my great-grandmother told me a story about a person she called the Hag of Manistee.

  In this story, there were two sisters. One was beautiful and fair, with golden hair and brilliant blue eyes. The other was homely and round, with dark stringy hair and muddy brown eyes. The two sisters loved to play in the Manistee Forest, braiding daisies into crowns, swinging from the branches of the oak tree and swimming in the shimmering pond filled with green lily pads and pink and white lilies.

  The girls did not know that an evil witch lived in the woods, lured by the sound of the dinner bell, which always hung about the beautiful sister's waist, for she was in charge of summoning the men in the evenings away from the farm and to the dinner table. The witch heard the bell and the girls' laughter and she crawled out from her lair beneath the earth and started to watch the sisters from the shadows of the forest. She grew more and more obsessed with the children, who reminded her of her own sister and herself.

  The hag had once played in the forest with her own sister. As a child, the hag had been short and homely with lank hair and dead eyes. Her sister was beautiful, blonde and blue-eyed and the envy of all the girls in their village. In her jealousy, the ugly sister murdered her beautiful sister and consumed her flesh, believing that she would absorb her beauty and grace. Instead, she was exiled by her family and banished to the forest.

  As the witch watched the girls, she became desperate to absorb the beautiful sister she now watched, much as she'd consumed her own sister years before. She watched and waited until one day the beautiful sister waded into the pond to swim alone. The witch reached one gnarled hand up through the cold mud and into the shimmering water. She grabbed the sister's ankles and yanked her through the mud and into her hut.

  The girl lived there for five days as the witch consumed her piece by piece, adding her slowly to her black cauldron and stirring her into nothing.

  A bead of sweat slid between Lori's shoulder blades, though it was cool in the room. "I don't like that story," she murmured.

  "It's not a likeable story,” Irene agreed. “But in it we see the number five appear, which is interesting based on your experience. Too, we see the dinner bell—also fascinating based on your experience.”

  “Do you think it’s real? This story?”

  “The story is real, but is the witch real? Well, can we prove that she is? And at the same time, can we prove that she’s not?”

  26

  Lori arrived at Ben's just before four p.m. The drive to his house had been a blur. She’d ruminated on the story of the witch in the Manistee National Forest. It both unnerved and excited her to have spoken with a woman who believed in the possibilities Lori had been entertaining. What she’d discovered, however, was that Ben's theory was less terrifying than a mystical witch who ate children.

  Ben walked out of the house as she parked. "Feel like driving?" Ben asked. "I'm spent."

  "Sure, yeah. Hop in," Lori told him through her open window, not bothering to get out of her car.

  Ben settled into the passenger seat, holding a stack of printed articles.

  "Not feeling well today?" she asked.

  He looked out the window b
ut gave her a nod. "I'm not sure I've recovered from my last shift. Then I took a long bike ride today, or attempted to anyway, but…" He didn't finish his statement.

  "You felt sick?"

  "Kind of. I felt off… let's just say that."

  Lori tucked her hair behind her ear. "Me too. Not sick, but I had the nightmare again last night. Kenny, my downstairs neighbor, and about ten of his friends came busting in because I was screaming. Let's just say it was not a restful night."

  "Damn, they came right into your apartment?"

  "Yep, broke the door down basically."

  "Maybe I should have driven.”

  Lori smiled. "No. It's good for me. I get more tired if I'm riding.”

  As Lori drove, Ben summarized the articles he'd printed, which included men in Michigan who'd been arrested or convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting or murdering young women or girls.

  "Leslie Allen Williams abducted and murdered girls in the fourteen-to-sixteen age range, but he was incarcerated in 1992, so he was off the streets before our girls vanished," Ben murmured, flipping through his pages. "The problem with everyone I found online is they were in prison before 2008 when Peyton went missing. I come back again and again to Hector."

  "Why did you print all those when you're convinced it's Hector?"

  "Maybe I'm wrong. I don't want to ignore other possibilities."

  Lori thought of the witch again and almost brought it up, but she already knew Ben's thoughts on the theory. Most people would agree with him. Even Lori's common sense agreed with him, but something deep in her gut kept coming back to the belief that something much darker than either of them had ever encountered had taken their friends.

  Peyton Weller’s aunt Gertrude lived in a modular home on a small lot surrounded by other modulars in Scottville. A deck and wheelchair ramp clung to the front of the yellowing exterior. Potted plants lined the porch rail and a dozen or more bird feeders hung from the house’s eaves and from trees scattered throughout the yard.

  Lori and Ben climbed from her car and walked to the front door. The screen door was closed, but the interior door stood open. Lori heard the sounds of the Dr. Phil show playing on the television.

  Ben knocked on the screen door. A heavy woman in a billowy green dress lumbered toward them, wiping a lock of sweaty hair from her forehead. "Hold on, I'm comin'."

  Her face appeared red from the effort, and she paused in front of a whirring fan that sat on her kitchen counter. She leaned into the fan and waved and mopped her neck with a hand towel. She continued to the door, struggling to catch her breath.

  "Sorry about that. This heat is just about killin' me." She pulled the screen door open. It screeched on its hinges.

  "Hi. You're Gertrude?" Ben asked.

  "Yep, come in," she told them. "It's not much cooler in here, but it's a smidge."

  Ben and Lori followed her. The living room lay only a few steps from the kitchen. Gertrude collapsed, winded, into a worn La-Z-Boy chair and grabbed a remote control from the armrest, muting the set. She waved at her crimson face for another moment. The overhead fan buzzed at full speed and two smaller fans droned from surfaces around the living room, but they did little to cut the stifling heat.

  Ben and Lori took the checkered sofa.

  "I'm Ben and this is Lori," he told her.

  "Hi. Nice to meet you," Lori said, feeling her own forehead perspire.

  "I figured you was," Gertrude told them. "Ain't got many visitors around here no more."

  "Are you still up for talking about Peyton?" Ben asked.

  "Sure am. I talk to her every day. Seems only right I should talk about her now and then."

  "You talk to her?" Lori asked.

  Gertrude gestured toward a hanging shelf arranged with four framed photographs. The images in the newspaper of Peyton Weller did not do her justice. The girl had been beautiful, with long caramel-colored hair, dreamy hazel eyes, and an infectious smile. In one photo, she stood in front of a stone fountain wearing a glittery gold miniskirt and a jean jacket. She looked closer to eighteen years old than fourteen.

  "She was very pretty," Lori said.

  "Sure was. Where she got them genes, I don't know. Her daddy, my brother Gary, was pretty good-lookin', but Rita, Peyton's mom, always had that street hustler look about her. Peyton coulda been a model."

  "Is that what she wanted to be?" Lori asked, thinking back to her own teenaged years and how she'd often thought Bev could be a model, though her best friend only laughed when she mentioned it.

  "Jesum crow, no!" Gertrude grabbed her towel from the TV tray beside her chair and mopped her glistening forehead. "She wanted to go to a big-time school just like that little girl in Gilmore Girls. Have you two seen that show? Peyton and I watched it all the time. She just loved it, especially Rory, the daughter. Rory wanted to be a reporter, one of them kind that goes into wars and things, so that's what Peyton wanted to be. Coulda done it too. She was sharp as a tack, that girl. Coulda done anything she set her mind to. Don't know where she got them brains either. A gift from God."

  "It must have been a terrible loss for you," Ben said.

  Gertrude lowered her voice as if someone else were in the house. "Ripped our family plum apart, destroyed it. Peyton's mom blamed Gary because he'd gotten involved in drugs and she was sure somebody had grabbed her over an unpaid debt or some such thing. Gary blamed Rita because she was off with a boyfriend that night. Things had been unraveling for them for a while. Peyton goin' missin' just was the straw that broke the camel's back.

  “There's a video out there somewhere, shameful. They let a reporter from the weekly paper come into their trailer for an interview after Peyton went missin'. That reporter started askin' questions about the drugs, which sent Rita spewing hate towards Gary, and he spewed it right back. Rita jumped on him in that tape, raked her nails across his cheek. It was terrible, and we were all angry, angry at Rita and Gary for makin' such a spectacle, because it caused everybody to focus on them instead of Peyton. Not to mention it got everybody saying, 'With a home like that, what fourteen-year-old girl wouldn't have run off?'”

  "Can you tell us about the night itself, everything you know about what happened the evening she disappeared?" Ben asked.

  "Fern Bowman was with her that night. They was real close, those two. Been chums since diapers. They both lived in the trailer park. Fern's ma used to work with me at the Buckeye Tavern, but then I got on the disability after a car accident. Fern and Peyton liked to walk the trails. They went just about every night in the summer. That or the kids would find a ride out to Hackert Lake to go swimmin'.

  “Fern said she and Peyton were hikin' along and Peyton had to go pee, so she slipped off into the woods and then… nothin'. She didn't come back. Fern started hollerin' for her, but Peyton kept stayin' gone. After a while, Fern got a little cheesed off and went stompin' outta them woods in a huff. She went on home to her trailer, but around ten or so, Rita called her up and asked where Peyton was. Fern told her she'd taken off on her in the woods, but that wasn't like Peyton, and once Fern knew she hadn't come home, that's when everybody started worrying.

  “So Rita called Gary home from wherever he was—some bar, I think. Gary called me and we made some more calls and a group of us headed out there in our cars and some went into the woods. Rita called the cops the next day, but they wasn't too concerned. Kids from the trailer park had a habit of takin’ off, but not Peyton. We kept on lookin', but the cops didn't for probably two weeks. By the time they sent out searchers any trace of her was long gone."

  "Did you suspect anyone?" Ben asked.

  "Of takin' her?" Gertrude pressed her lips together grimly. "She was real special and there's a lot of perverts out there. If any of ’em got their eye on her, it woulda been an easy place to nab her, but I can't see how Fern never saw or heard nothin'. But then maybe she'd been scared into keepin' her mouth shut."

  "Was Fern open about that night? Did she talk to police?" Ben asked.


  "Yeah, she did, but then her mama packed her up and moved her out of town not two months after Peyton went missin'. Seemed strange to me, but what could I do?"

  "This might sound odd, but was Peyton wearing anything that night that you know of that made a sound?" Lori asked. She glanced at Ben, who looked exasperated at her question. “Like a bell?”

  Gertrude gave her a curious look. "That is a funny question, because yeah, she was, though I don't think they ever printed that in the paper. She had on this pretty silver anklet that had little clumps of bells on it. It was adorable, and she cherished that thing. A boy at school had given it to her for her birthday about a month before she disappeared. She had a birthday party at Riverside Park. I made a strawberry cake from one of them Sara Lee mixes. That was her favorite.

  “Her dad didn't show for the party, and her mom was ranting on her phone every five minutes, calling to scream at him for being a deadbeat. It could have ruined Peyton's day, but she was the kind of girl who didn't let things get her down. You know? Sometimes I wondered how Gary and Rita produced such an angel. I love my brother, but he's been a hard person all his life. Not mean or anything. Just prone to getting into things he shouldn't, getting involved with women he shouldn't."

  "Where are Peyton's parents now?" Ben asked before Lori could probe further into the anklet.

  "Gary's living in a motel down by the border of Indiana that rents by the week. He's been in rehab three times, but can't seem to make it stick. Last I heard of Rita she'd met some guy and followed him out west, Vegas, but who knows where she's at now."

  "But there's still an open investigation into Peyton's case," Ben pushed.

  Gertrude shrugged. "They say there is, but nothing ever happens. We're really alone out there. That's what it comes down to. People think if someone goes missin' the cops will swoop in and turn over every rock." She shook her head. "No, siree, not for our Peyton, anyway. Like I said, they took one look at Gary and Rita and started muttering the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."